


a shadow with teeth

by rythyme (pugglemuggle)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Bonding Over Shared Trauma, Cryptozoology, Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Emotional Constipation, Flirting, Halloween, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Marijuana, Mental Health Issues, Monsters, Murder Mystery, Mutual Pining, Nyctophobia, Original Character(s), Psychological Horror, Sharing a Bed, Some blood and gore, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vulnerability, and they were roommates!, baking as a love language, gratuitous twilight references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23609776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pugglemuggle/pseuds/rythyme
Summary: “Hey,” Dex croaks, wincing at the tremor in his voice. God, he feels stupid. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey. Sorry. Um.”Nursey eyes him skeptically, brows furrowed. “What’s up?”“Can I—” Dammit. Why is this so difficult? “Can I sleep up here tonight?”Or, there's a creature lurking in the dark, and it's after Dex and Nursey. The only way they'll come out of this alive is if they work together.Featuring, in no particular order: apple pies, abandoned university buildings, flirting disguised as chirping, hockey sticks used as monster-hunting weapons, homoerotic bed sharing, cryptozoology research montages, flesh-hungry shadow demons, and confessions of love.
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 21
Kudos: 73
Collections: Going Out With A Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for [Going Out With A Bang](https://goingoutwithabigbang.tumblr.com/), the 2020 Check Please big bang event. The corresponding art for this fic was created by the lovely artist Alex (@skiddly-bop) and can be found [here](https://skiddly-bop.tumblr.com/post/615825878586458112/wow-wow-wow-check-please-is-finally-over-can) on their tumblr.
> 
> I started writing this fic in October as a warm up to remember how to write Nursey and Dex again. I had a different big fic planned, which I was originally going to use for the big bang. But that one was too long and I couldn’t finish it in time, so I turned back to this fic. It's been a wild ride for sure! I hope you like it!
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings:** Blood & gore, body horror, anxiety attacks, PTSD, malevolent supernatural entities, and nyctophobia (fear of the dark).

Spider threads catch at Dex’s face, a sign that this place really is just as abandoned as it looks. He sputters, waving his flashlight out in front of him to clear a path. The building is even darker inside than the moonless night outside. Dex is lucky that Nursey isn’t quite crazy enough to have them do this stupid “adventure” without any lights. It’s still stupid, though. 

“If I have to inhale one more spiderweb tonight, I’m going to kill you, Nurse,” he calls ahead. 

Nursey is a good ten paces in front, looking at some graffiti on the wall. “Sure,” he replies distractedly. “You can count on it.” 

Dex rolls his eyes. For whatever reason, Nursey got it into his head that the thing he wanted most in the world was to go exploring through the dilapidated old science building on the southwestern edge of campus. The place is all boarded up—has been for years—but it boasts the best graffiti art gallery in all of Samwell. Or so Nursey says.

Dex still isn’t sure why they have to come at night, though. In the dark. On Halloween.

“It’ll be more fun,” Nursey had said. “Plus, it’d be harder to get caught in the dark.”

That was the only sensible thing Nursey had said all night. “Fun” was very, very debatable.

“Can’t you just take some pictures so we can go?” Dex huffs. He flashes his light over a bucket in the corner of the hallway which seems to have some kind of brown algae growing in it. “This place is definitely not up to health code.”

“You know, you didn’t have to come if you didn’t want to be here,” Nursey says. He throws a grin over his shoulder, his teeth shining white in the glow of his flashlight, and God. Dex could just strangle him.

“If I didn’t come, you’d just get yourself hurt.”

“Aw. I didn’t think you worried about me getting hurt.”

“If you get hurt again, our hockey season is over.”

“Aaand there’s Mister No-Fun. For a second I thought you actually cared about me.”

“Your mistake,” Dex grumbles back and turns to look the other way.

The Madison Science Building is two floors high with walls of red brick. The place was abandoned fifteen years ago when the school got a grant to build a new science building with modern amenities and better insulation. Madison has been empty ever since—save for the moss and vines and bugs that now make it their home.

They’re walking down the main hallway right now. The brick walls on either side do have a pretty impressive spread of street art, Dex will admit. One of the pieces looks a little like something Lardo might draw. He wonders if Lardo has ever painted something in here.

“Whoa, dude. Check out that one.”

Nursey is pointing up at a big stretch of the ceiling that has been covered in bright white and yellow spray paint to make a long, stylized skull. Each of the eye sockets are red halos, like fiery coronas around the dark hole of an eclipsed sun. From the mouth of the skull pours a river of elongated black and white faces with varying expressions of distress and terror, not unlike Edvard Munch’s Scream. The technical skill behind whoever created it is undeniable, but looking at it makes Dex feel uneasy.

“Looks like someone was having a bad day,” Dex says. Nursey laughs. 

“But you admit it’s cool.” 

Dex frowns. “I guess.” 

“If you hadn’t come, you’d never have seen it.” 

Before Dex can come up with a reply, Nursey walks through the rusted double doors at the end of the hallway and into the atrium. Dex has no choice but to follow. 

The first thing Dex notices when the doors swing open is the smell. The atrium is a huge empty space which should theoretically get plenty of ventilation, but instead the air tastes stale and putrid, like a bad combination of shit and decay. He grimaces and tries not to gag. “This is—great. Just a great place you’ve brought me to.”

“What, you can’t handle a little smell?” Nursey shoots back, but Dex can see that he’s covering his nose.

At one point, the atrium probably had study tables, or maybe a cafeteria. Now, there’s just a few empty spray paint cans and some dirt. The walls here are just as decorated as the hallway had been—perhaps even more so. Dex shines his flashlight across the space, the bright light glinting off the tiled floor. There’s a depression in the middle of the room where the tiles slope downwards, the shallow hole filled with water that glitters under the beam of his flashlight. 

As they take a couple steps further in, the air becomes even more foul. “God. Did something die in here?” Dex complains, burying his nose in the crook of his arm. 

“It’s probably just a dead rat or something,” Nursey replies with a laugh, but there’s an edge to his laughter that rings just a little bit too shrill. Dex doesn’t call him out on it. He feels it, too.

Dex follows Nursey towards the center of the atrium, their footsteps echoing a little more cautiously as they approach the pool of water. It’s cold in here—colder than it was in the hallway before—and Dex shivers, pulling his hockey jacket a little closer over his chest. He knows it’s only his imagination, but the shadows dancing across the walls from the flashlights take on a more sinister quality. At one point, Nursey jumps and swings the beam towards the far left wall, but it’s just a moth. Still, it puts Dex on edge. There’s something _wrong_ here. He can feel it. 

“Nursey,” he says, keeping his voice even. “I think we should go.” 

“Yeah,” Nursey concedes. “Maybe you’re right.”

The fact that he doesn’t even put up a fight is a good indication that Nursey is probably scared shitless.

Just as they turn around, the light of Dex’s flashlight sweeps over a shape in the corner that makes Dex’s breath freeze in his chest. His heart stops. His flashlight is pointed at the floor and he isn’t sure if he dares to lift it back up again.

“Hey, Dex? You okay?” Nursey asks when he sees that Dex isn’t following him.

Dex doesn’t reply. Something in Dex’s face must scare Nursey though, because he stops in his tracks, his eyes going wide. 

“Dex? Nursey’s voice is an octave too high. “What’s wrong?”

It takes all of Dex’s willpower to lift the beam of his flashlight back up to the corner again. Every cell in his body is aching with dread, the image of that shape burning in his mind like a nightmare he can’t wake up from. Slowly, the light slides up, up across the tile—and stops.

“Oh—Oh my god.”

Heaped in the corner, surrounded by a black puddle of blood, is a body.

—

It’s three-thirty in the morning when they’re finally allowed to leave the police station.

“You boys did the right thing,” says the officer, smiling with just her lips. “We’ll figure out what happened and give you a call if we need anything else. Stay safe.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dex replies. Nursey says nothing, his shoulders just as rigid as they were when the first set foot into the campus police station. Luckily, the officer doesn’t seem to mind his silence.

Nursey’s posture relaxes a little when they walk out of the station, but he’s still unusually quiet, and his eyes are still a little glassy.

They walk side-by-side in silence for several minutes. Campus has gone completely still by now, and although the main pathways are well-lit, the darkness around them is always just a few paces away. 

Dex is glad he’s not alone.

When they cross the river, Dex finally decides to break the silence. “How are you feeling?” he asks, which is dumb. He knows how Nursey is feeling. He’s feeling the same way.

“Fine,” Nursey replies. They both know he’s not, but Dex can’t really blame him for saying so. If Nursey had been the one to ask, Dex probably would have given him the same answer.

“Should we tell the others when we get back?” Dex presses on. “Bitty might be up, if he decided to wait for us.”

Nursey takes a while to answer. His hands are shoved in his pockets, his mouth set in a grim line as he stares resolutely ahead at the leaf-strewn sidewalk. His gaze remains fixed even when he finally answers.

“I think we should wait.” His breath clouds in front of his face in the cold air. “We can tell them in the morning.”

“Okay,” Dex agrees. Probably for the best. It’s late. He really just wants to sleep.

They don’t say another word until they get back to the Haus. The lights inside are off—Bitty must have gone to bed after all. When they step inside, there’s a brief, terrifying moment where Dex swears that every shadow in the kitchen is a corpse before Nursey reaches out to flip on the light. 

Nursey offers a dull “Goodnight” before heading up to his bedroom. Dex lingers in the kitchen for longer than he needs to, feeling an irrational unease about descending into the basement alone. He loiters by the refrigerator, gets himself a glass of water, sits at the kitchen table and looks out the window. He lifts the glass to his lips and realizes that his hands are shaking a little. He’s not sure if it’s from his unease when they stepped into the house or if he’s just been like this the whole time.

After a few more minutes staring out across the Haus lawn, he sees a cloud of smoke floating out from the roof into the barren night sky, hazy against the porch light. There’s a cough upstairs, and then another cloud of smoke. The kitchen starts to smell faintly like skunk.

He can picture Nursey up there on the roof, his legs drawn into his chest as he plows through a joint. He can picture it because he’s seen it before—the night after a rough game, or in the midst of finals season, or during a bad break-up. He’d usually roll his eyes and gripe about NCAA rules, but right now, alone in the dimly lit kitchen, Dex is stupidly, achingly envious. There’s a part of him that wants nothing more than to climb up onto that roof and join Nursey, to find the oblivion Nursey always goes to when the stress builds up a little too much. He wouldn’t even mind Nursey’s company. He’d welcome it, even. It’d mean he wasn’t alone.

But Dex’s pride puts a stop to that fantasy. He takes another sip of water to steel himself before he walks to the basement door and turns on the light down the steps. He goes around to each corner of the basement, his heart hammering in his chest, and turns on every light one by one until the entire place is illuminated. Then he does the same in his room. 

It takes him a long, long time to fall asleep that night.

—

When the light flashes up, he sees the body again--crumpled, broken, rotting. He knows it’s human from the shape, but every other feature has been disfigured beyond recognition. Most of the face is ripped away, four parallel gashes carved deep into the flesh, the edges red and black and festering. The chest has been opened like a walnut cracked down the middle, agape with red-yellow ribs reaching out through the decaying skin. Even from this distance, he can see that there are pieces missing. The shine of the flashlight illuminates a crescent-shaped gap in the shoulder, as if an entire chunk of flesh was bitten away by a huge mouth of fine teeth. 

The worst part, though, is the eye. Or rather, the place the eye should be. While one eye socket is missing entirely, lost underneath the terrible gashes that cover the victim’s face, the other eye socket remains intact. The eye itself is gone. In its place is a dark empty hole, red-rimmed and gaping. Dex feels it staring into him, spearing him like a harpoon to the chest, trapping him in place before reeling him in closer, closer, closer until he’s lost in that dark place with the smell of rot and decay and death and he can’t _move_ , can’t _speak_ , can’t _breathe—_

Dex shoots awake in a cold sweat, his entire body shaking. He stares into the bright light of his little room. Tries to catch his breath. His eyes are stinging. He chokes back a noise that attempts to rip from his chest, shoves it back down and covers his mouth with his arm. 

He stays like this for several minutes.

Eventually he manages to reach a shaky hand over to his phone on the nightstand. It’s 5:24 AM. He doesn’t think he fell asleep until at least 4:30, so he’s only been asleep for about an hour. 

The stinging in his eyes comes back with a vengeance and he tosses the phone onto his bed. His heart is still beating wildly in his chest. There’s no way he’s going to be able to get back to sleep now.

He changes quickly into his running clothes, shoves his phone in his pocket, and heads upstairs. For the first time in his adult life, he does not turn off the lights after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh dex honey... please don't try to run away from your problems


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoo! chapter 2! 
> 
> Warning: the nyctophobia, unhealthy coping strategies, and supernatural entities will all be present in this chapter.

When he gets back from a long and brutal morning run, Nursey and Bitty are sitting in the living room talking in hushed voices. They both stop and look up when he walks in. 

“Hey, Dex,” Bitty says, voice gentle. Dex frowns. “How are you doing?”

“Fine. Just tired.” He glances at Nursey, who’s now looking down at his hands. “I’m guessing Nursey told you…”

Bitty nods and stands. “I’m so sorry, Dex. That must have been so scary.” He takes a few steps forward and wraps Dex in a tight hug. Dex returns the hug awkwardly, stiff and a little too loose. 

“It’s fine,” Dex says. “Really.”

“Still,” Bitty insists, pulling back. “If you boys need anything—please just tell me, okay? I know a thing or two about how scary things can linger.” 

Bitty gives them a wan smile at that, and Dex remembers how Bitty would curl up on the ice after a check, how even after four years on a college hockey team he still goes rigid at a hit during practice. It makes a pang of guilt ache in his chest when he nods at Bitty again and says, with far less sincerity than he should be feeling, “Thanks, Bitty. I will.”

“Yeah. Thanks, B,” Nursey agrees. He smiles back at Bitty, and at least his expression  _ seems _ genuine, even if Dex isn’t totally convinced. Nursey is notoriously good at pretending he’s fine when he isn’t.

“Good,” Bitty says. “Take it easy in class today, you two. I’ll have some pie waiting for you when you get back.”

Bitty disappears back into the kitchen, leaving Nursey and Dex alone in the living room. Nursey is wearing pajama pants and a tank top, so it’s safe to guess that he hasn’t been awake long. There’s a long, drawn-out silence between the two of them before Dex asks, “You sleep okay?” 

“Nah.” Nursey shrugs. “It’s chill, though.”

“Yeah.” 

Another silence.

“Well. Just finished my run, so...I need to shower,” Dex says eventually. “Is it cool if I—”

“Oh. Yeah, go for it. It’s all yours. C’s still asleep.”

“Cool.”

Dex leaves. 

Even after moving to the basement, he still shares a shower with Chowder and Nursey. Building a room in the basement is one thing, but redoing the plumbing to accomodate a basement bathroom is taking a little more time.

Since Chowder is asleep, Dex goes through Nursey’s room to get to the bathroom. Usually he’ll wait until Chowder is awake and go through his side; he feels uncomfortable being in Nursey’s room when Nursey isn’t there, like he’s intruding. He’s not sure why he feels that. Dex was the one who left, after all.

Nursey’s room is a mess, as usual. The stale smell of last night’s weed still lingers in the room, and the floor is covered with clothes. The desk is piled so high with junk that it’s no wonder Nursey always does his school work in the living room or at the kitchen table. He sighs and reminds himself to ignore it. This isn’t Dex’s space anymore. Nursey can do whatever he wants with his room. 

As he picks his way through the piles of clothes on the floor, he notices—despite himself—that there are also far more beer cans littering the floor than usual. Maybe Nursey was trying to get crossed—not just stoned. Seeing it makes Dex embarrassed. Nursey wouldn’t want to know what this means, but he does, and it feels even more like an invasion than just being in his room. Still, he’s a little relieved too, in a twisted sort of way. He guessed that Nursey was probably just as shaken up as he was, but seeing the evidence of it makes him feel a little less helpless, a little less alone. 

He finishes his shower quickly and heads back down to his room. He doesn’t want to linger. If Nursey is struggling just like Dex is, then he’s pretty sure he’s the last person Nursey wants to share that with. 

—

When Dex arrives at his first class, everyone is talking about the body. The campus-wide email that went out this morning called it a freak animal attack. The victim was Samwell student Aya El Mehdi, a freshman who planned on becoming an art major. Campus security has advised that everyone take caution while walking around at night until the animal is caught.

“Isn’t it crazy? They’re not even gonna close campus,” one of his classmates—Rita—says when Dex takes his seat. “She was attacked  _ on campus _ . And the animal hasn’t been caught yet! I was still at the soccer team’s halloween party when that happened. That’s scary.” 

He and Rita have worked on a few group projects together, and normally he’s glad to have someone to chat with, but today it’s hard to come up with a response. “Yeah,” he finally settles on. “It’s—weird.”

“Dude, you look super tired,” she says. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” He thinks for a moment, about telling her he was the one who found the body. He decides against it. It’s too much to go into. “Just didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Oh?” Rita raises an eyebrow and grins. “I thought the hockey team had their Halloween party last weekend so it wouldn’t overlap with the other sports teams’ parties.”

“We did. I—was out with a teammate.”

Rita opens her mouth to say something else, but then the professor says, “Okay, let’s get started,” and class begins. 

Dex is usually a pretty good student, but today he finds it almost impossible to focus. He keeps catching himself staring blankly at the front of the classroom before coming back to himself and realizing he’s just missed the last three slides of content. It's just the lack of sleep, he tells himself. He only got about an hour last night. Everything's fine—he’s pulled all-nighters before for various coding projects. There’s no reason this can’t be business as usual.

But maybe it’s the normalcy itself that’s unsettling him. Sure, students might be a little shaken about the idea of a dangerous animal loose on campus, but class is carrying on as usual. He’s still listening to his professor explain the dangers of DDoS attacks, pretending to take notes, sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by classmates who have no idea what Dex saw last night. He found a body. He found a body, and all he’s doing is learning about cyber security. 

The rest of class is a blur. When the bell rings, he’s one of the first people out.

—

The rest of his classes go more or less the same way. People trade stories about where they were last night. A few of his classmates debate about whether campus should be closed. Dex tunes most of it out when he can, but it’s hard to do when it’s all his classmates talk about. He feels himself pulling further and further away, like there’s an invisible barrier between him and the rest of them. He can’t join the discussions but he can’t escape them either, can’t stop hearing the words. He just wants to go home and go to sleep. He’s too tired to deal with this shit right now. 

As soon as his last class is over, he heads back to the Haus. The front page of the Samwell Daily seems to shout at him from every newspaper stand. He didn’t realize that Samwell had this many newspaper stands, or that their publication turnaround was this quick, but it feels like every few feet he’s seeing the headline  _ “Student Dies in Animal Attack”  _ and the words _ , “Aya El Mehdi, freshman, born in Morocco and raised in Eastham, MA,” _ and Aya’s face smiling in black and white. He didn’t know what she looked like before seeing the newspaper, aside from— 

He doesn’t think about it.

The sun is setting as he crosses campus on his way to the Haus. Shadows creep from underneath the trees, stretching long across the grassy quads and reaching towards the sidewalks. He quickens his pace. The Haus is just a few minutes away. He’ll be home soon, and then he can sit in his room with his lights on and get some sleep—

Movement out of the corner of his eye stops him in his tracks. 

There’s a shadow. It’s slinking across the gray brick facade of the building to this right: something on all-fours, limbs long and skeletal, and it’s moving in a way that shadows shouldn’t and it’s— It’s not a tree. It’s not a person. It’s almost like—

He steels himself enough to turn his head. The wall is empty.

He turns around to look in the other direction, towards the sun, towards whatever it was that made the shadow, but there’s nothing there, either. It’s an empty patch of grass. Not even a tree to cast a shadow. 

His heart is beating in his ears and he tries to calm himself, tries to shove away the panic whirring in his brain. It was probably just a squirrel or something, he tells himself. Or maybe it’s just his imagination running wild after the last twenty-four hours of stress and sleep deprivation. If he gets a good night’s rest he’ll feel better.

But rationalizing it doesn’t stop his mind from racing. And it certainly doesn’t help him sleep.

—

For four days, he hardly sleeps. It’s dumb, because it’s not even the memory of Aya’s body that’s keeping him awake, though it’s a hard image to forget. It’s just… He keeps feeling like he’s being watched. Or like there’s something in the shadows he can’t see. The lighting in his bedroom isn’t terrible, but it’s not great, either, and when he lays down for the night the shadow of his desk lamp will suddenly look like something else. The adrenaline will spike, all his muscles will tense up, and he’ll spend the next hour listening to random podcasts to try to make himself relax again. 

It’s stupid. He’s twenty-one. He shouldn’t be scared of the dark.

By the fifth day, he knows he looks like shit. Bitty sends him home early from morning practice and Chowder has been casting him worried glances all afternoon. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with that conversation, so he tells Chowder he’s going to bed early and spends the rest of the evening in his room.

At least Nursey is also looking like shit—or at least, as much as it’s possible for one of the Swallow’s Top Fifty Most Beautiful to look like shit. Dex hasn’t seen much of him the last few days, but when he came down to grab some food today there were bags under his eyes and his usual five o’clock shadow was looking more like an eleven o’clock one. He and Nursey haven’t talked much since the first night. It’s probably for the best.

By ten o’clock, Dex knows he should try to get some sleep. He’s certainly tired enough for it. He puts his laptop away and lays down in his bed, blinking at the well-lit wall of his makeshift bedroom and trying to force his heart rate to slow down enough to let him sleep. God, he hates this. Sleeping always came easy to him before. When this is over, he’ll never take sleeping for granted again.

He must drift off at some point. He’s in his room, except there’s a window on the far wall in front of him facing the moonless night sky, and the Ikea lights overhead are a lot dimmer. He’s sitting upright against his headboard, staring out that window. Having a window should make his room a little brighter, he thinks, but instead all that’s coming through the window pane is more shadow. It stretches across the floor of the tiny room, reaching across the gray concrete until the shadow begins to pull itself into a silhouette he recognizes—one with long, bony limbs and a sinewy, rope-like tail and a jaw that yawns wider and wider as claws reach towards him—

A sharp pain on his shin jolts him awake. 

He yanks the sheets off of his body and scrambles away from the edge of his bed. His heart is hammering. The room is filled with the acrid smell of fear and sweat and every muscle in his body is trembling. His eyes dart around the room frantically, searching every shadow and there are so many more than he remembers, why are there more? He stares at the fixture overhead and sees that one of the bulbs has gone out. It’s not just his imagination. The room really is dimmer.

When he looks down again to the shadows under his desk, his blood turns to ice.

He stares. A pair of yellow eyes stare back.

The eyes do not blink, and neither does he. He is frozen, locked in place. He wants to run but he can’t; he can only fixate on the cat-like pupils that seem to grow thinner and thinner until they’re nothing but slivers of inky black against irises like yellow sulfur. His stomach clenches painfully. He doesn’t dare breathe.

He isn’t sure how long he spends staring. Could be a minute, could be ten minutes. His muscles ache, and his eyes and throat feel dry as paper. He’s trying so hard not to blink, but he knows it’s only a matter of time. He can’t keep this up. 

His body finally gives out. Without his instruction his eyes close, just for a second. When he opens them again, the eyes are gone.

He sits on his bed for several more moments, panic rising, before a sting on his leg reminds him why he woke up in the first place. He doesn’t want to look. He knows what he’s going to see, felt the drag of  _ something _ across his skin, and yet— And yet looking makes it real. 

But he doesn’t have a choice.

He takes a shaky breath, unbends his knee, and looks down at his shin.

Four red scratch marks extend from his ankle halfway to his knee—not quite deep enough to bleed much but still enough to hurt. And it does hurt. He’s not dreaming. 

He’s out of the room before he can fully process what he’s doing.

The basement light is still on—thank God. His feet are carrying him up the stairs faster than he probably should this time of night, but each step makes him afraid of the shadows lurking in the dark gap beneath every stair, and he can’t—he can’t slow down. Not after what he saw. Not after what he felt. 

He goes up the second flight of stairs, a little slower this time, flicking lights on as he goes. Once he’s at the landing, he turns right and follows the hall down until he’s standing in front of a familiar room. 

There’s a little bit of light spilling out from the gap under Nursey’s door. He hesitates for several long moments, weighing his options. He hadn’t really meant to come up here, but now that he’s here he doesn’t think he can stomach turning back. A thick, viscous kind of shame settles in his gut next to the fear that’s made its home there, but the new feeling isn’t enough to convince him to leave. 

Nursey is the only one who won't ask him questions. He was there that night. He saw it too.

Dex raises his fist to the door and knocks twice, careful and quiet. Then he waits with bated breath.

At first, he thinks maybe Nursey didn’t hear him, or chose not to, and he’s going to be standing out here waiting for nothing. Then he hears some shuffling on the other side of the door—the sound of the bunk bed’s ladder creaking, the sound of footsteps across the floorboards. The door knob twists, the door swings back, and then Nursey is standing there in front of him in sweat pants that ride low on his hips, looking pale and drawn and just as exhausted as Dex feels.

“Hey,” Dex croaks, wincing at the tremor in his voice. God, he feels stupid. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey. Sorry. Um.”

Nursey eyes him skeptically, brows furrowed. “What’s up?”

Shit. Why is this so difficult?

“Can I—” Fuck. He blinks. Swallows. Tries again. “Can I sleep up here?”

Nursey doesn’t move for a long, long moment, his bare arm still blocking the doorway where it’s resting against the frame. For a terrifying several seconds, Dex thinks he’s going to turn him away—but then Nursey steps back. 

“Okay,” Nursey says. “Sure. I… I could use the company.” 

Dex is too tired to dwell on what that means. He follows Nursey back into the well-lit bedroom, watches as Nursey locks the door behind them, and then collapses onto the bottom bunk of the bed. Nursey climbs the ladder and returns to the top bunk.

Dex’s heart is still pounding, and the adrenaline takes a while to fade. He stays awake in the room for a long, long time, listening to the sounds of Nursey’s breathing—not quite slow enough for Dex to believe he’s asleep, but the noise is an anchor all the same. It’s far from perfect, but he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is better. At least this way his imagination has a little less room to run. At least this way he’s not alone.

When he does fall asleep several hours later, it’s mercifully, blessedly dreamless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh ariana, we're really in it now
> 
> next chapter: shit pops off


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't think too hard about where this fic fits in the timeline of check please haha. i kind of tried to make it canon compliant? it theoretically takes place during november 2016 (rip we're going to ignore the real-life implications of that). but idk when nursey's "sports injury" actually happens, or when dex moved to the basement, or like...what the hockey season actually looked like. so we're not gonna think about it!!!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: More nyctophobia, poor management of trauma, and malevolent supernatural entities. There's also a scene that could be perceived as gaslighting, but it doesn't last and it's more about being unable to reconcile certain events with reality. So yeah. This chapter gets a little tense.

Dex stays in the old room the next night too, as well as the night after. 

Nursey doesn’t say much about it—though in fairness, neither does Dex. The morning after the first night when Dex is brushing his teeth in the shared bathroom, Nursey just says, “You can stay tonight too, if you need to,” and that’s the end of it. Dex is privately grateful he didn’t have to ask. It was hard enough to swallow his pride the first time.

Daylight makes the whole thing seem even stupider than it had before. After several nights with limited sleep and enough stress to bring back his teenage acne, it’s no wonder he started having trouble drawing the line between nightmare and reality. The scratches on his leg were hardly deep enough to scab—probably just the handiwork of his own blunt fingernails. He’s done stranger things while asleep.

But nightmare or not, he still avoids spending time in the basement. After the first night, he makes a trip to gather the basics: clothes, his school stuff, his laptop, deodorant. He puts it in a duffel bag that he slides underneath the bottom bunk in the old room. If Nursey notices, he doesn’t comment on it.

The next couple days feel like emerging from a fog. The amount of difference a night or two of mediocre sleep can make is astounding. Class is tolerable, and he’s not completely useless at practice. Though he still sleeps lightly and takes longer than he ever used to to fall asleep, he’ll gladly take this over the last several nearly sleepless nights.

His fourth night back in the old room, he’s in the bottom bunk, scrolling through Reddit on his phone and waiting for Nursey to finish getting ready for bed. It’s a familiar routine—one that has been surprisingly easy to slip back into. The only difference now is that Dex no longer complains about Nursey’s messy habits, and Nursey hasn’t been going out of his way to annoy Dex. Part of him is grateful; it makes this temporary cohabitation easier. 

But another part of him feels a little disquieted. He doesn’t _miss_ the arguing—”miss” would be the wrong word. Arguing with Nursey has been one of his life’s constants. Usually it’s annoying, but sometimes it’s _fun_ —a way to let off steam. Now they hardly speak, let alone argue, and maybe he doesn’t miss it but it does make him feel like something is _missing_. It’s a reminder of how different things are now, how _not normal_ they both are, and Dex doesn’t like it. It makes it harder to pretend everything is okay.

Chowder already stopped by to say goodnight about twenty minutes ago; he’s staying at Farmer’s place tonight. Dex is reading a few posts in r/stocks—because a few startups he’s been following have been doing especially well lately and he’s thinking of buying—when Nursey turns off the light.

It only lasts a moment, but Dex’s body goes rigid. Nursey turns the light on again after just a few seconds and says, “Sorry—didn’t mean to do that. It’s a habit.” 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Dex manages to say. He unclenches his fingers from his phone and tries to get his heart to relax even as it continues to beat wildly in his chest. God, he hates this. He’d been fine just a minute ago. He shouldn’t have to live like this, shouldn’t have to _need_ this. It’s all in his head. It’s not real. He takes in a breath, swallows, and says, “You can keep them off, actually. If you want.”

Nursey is quiet for a moment, then says, “We can keep them on. I really don’t mind.”

And that— It shouldn’t make Dex angry but it does, and he can’t even articulate why. “I said it’s fine,” he bites out. “It’s better if they’re off. We’ve probably been driving up the electricity bill.”

In his peripheral vision, he can see Nursey hesitate again, but this time he doesn’t reply. Instead he moves back towards the middle of the room, flips the light switch, and plunges the room back into darkness.

Dex’s pulse jumps. His eyes aren’t adjusted to the dark—haven’t had to be for a few days now—and the room looks pitch black. He can’t see. He can’t _see_ , and everywhere he looks are shapes that make him think of—

No. Breathe, he reminds himself. _Focus_. Don’t let your mind wander. Concentrate on what’s real. This bed is real. The creaking of the bunk bed ladder as Nursey climbs haphazardly into the top bunk—that’s real too. The wind against the window, the sound of cars outside, the smell of his laundry detergent still lingering in sheets he hasn’t washed since he moved out—that’s all real. As long as he stays focused, he’ll be fine. As long as he doesn’t let his brain conjure monsters out of shadows, he’ll be okay.

For a couple hours, his strategy works.

It’s hard to fall asleep while keeping such a militant grip on his thoughts. Letting the mind wander is almost a prerequisite for falling asleep. Lying in bed, concentrating on the evidence of the real world around him, makes sleep nearly impossible to find. Sure, he avoids panicking, but his mind still isn’t settling. He doesn’t feel comfortable, not like he’s felt in this room since he started sleeping here again.

He’s still lying in bed awake when the digital clock on the desk next to the bed switches to midnight. That’s when it comes.

At first, it’s subtle—just a soft creaking of the floorboards, nothing that couldn’t be explained by the house settling. Still, it makes Dex tense. He stares up at the wooden slats of the bunk bed above him and does not let his eyes stray towards the rest of the dark room. It’s nothing. It’s nothing.

Then Dex sees just the barest hint of movement in the corner of his eye as a pencil holder tips off the side of the desk and clatters to the floor. 

Above him, there’s the sound of rustling sheets and a creak in the bed frame—Nursey. The sound must have woken him up. Panic wells high in Dex’s chest, his throat growing tight. _Breathe, Dex_. It’s not like that night in the basement. That time, he was alone. He’s not alone now. 

The sound of the pencils rolling across the wood floor is loud, so loud in the quiet room and Dex can’t make his body move, can barely breathe. Things— Things fall sometimes at night. It happens. He swallows back the thick wave of fear that floods his veins and says, as loud as he dares, “It’s just pencils, Nursey. Go back to sleep.”

The room is silent. Nursey doesn’t respond. 

“Nursey?” he says again. He could have sworn he heard movement from Nursey’s bunk. Maybe Nursey isn’t awake after all, or maybe Dex’s voice wasn’t loud enough. Nursey might still be fast asleep. Still—Dex can’t shake the feeling that something is _wrong_. He feels it low in his gut, some kind of primal certainty that screams _danger_ , and it’s that feeling which eventually breaks his paralysis and lets him move.

Dex swings his legs over the edge of the bed, the floorboards like ice beneath his bare feet. Slowly, he stands. The room is difficult to traverse at the best of times, and even worse now that there are pencils scattered everywhere too, but he manages. He takes one step, and then another. Once he’s far enough back to have a good view of the top bunk, he turns.

Nursey is awake. He’s sitting upright in the bed, motionless, staring upwards with wide, bright eyes. Above him looms a shadow.

The figure is huge, hunching in on itself as it fills the space between the bed and the ceiling. Its body is like a solid shadow. It reflects no light, and there are no visible details beyond the form’s inky black silhouette, but it’s _there_. He can see it. He can see the fork at the end of its long, curved tail, its four skeletal limbs, the bony shape of its joints as it hovers over Nursey in a catlike crouch. As he watches, the beast slowly opens its mouth to reveal rows of gleaming black teeth like sharpened obsidian—the only parts of its body that seem to reflect any light at all. The beast’s jaw opens wider and wider, splitting the endless dark of its body and revealing more and more teeth as its jaw unhinges, a gaping maw of fangs and saliva and tongue. _Like a snake swallowing its prey whole,_ Dex thinks.

Before he knows what he’s doing, Dex is crying out.

“ _Nursey_ ,” he calls, his voice breaking. The loudness of his own shout surprises him, and it must surprise the creature as well. Its head turns sharply, jaw still opened wide as it fixes its yellow eyes on him instead. 

Time seems to stand still. The beast stares, and Dex stares back.

Dex moves at the same time the monster pounces. As soon as the beast’s legs twitch Dex lunges to the side, lurching towards the light switch by the door. He can make it. It’s just a few feet. He nearly trips over himself as the beast lands behind him, its claws scratching on the wood floor like a panther dropping from a tree, and the room smells like death, everything smells like death but he’s so close, just another step away—

He flips the switch. The room is immediately flooded with light, so bright and sudden it almost blinds him. There’s a terrible, screeching hiss behind him, like the hollow shriek of someone who’s already screamed themself hoarse, and Dex turns around just in time to see the black shape in the middle of the floor recoil. Its limbs seem to contort, bowing inwards as the creature writhes, maw still agape. Then it pivots, claws scraping into the floor, and leaps towards the window.

There’s the sound of cracking glass, and then—nothing. Silence.

Dex braces himself against the wall, his whole body shuddering. His heart is beating so fast it almost hurts, and his entire body is cold. His eyes and throat begin to sting.

“Dex,” whispers a voice. Dex looks up at Nursey on the top bunk. He’s still sitting upright, and in the light Dex can tell that he’s shaking too. “Dex, what— _What was that?”_

“I…” Dex begins, but then he stops. Reality is bleeding back into focus, and Dex feels himself grasping for it like a lifeline.

“It’s just a nightmare,” Dex says finally, unable to keep his voice from trembling. “It’s fine now, everything’s— Don’t worry about it.”

_“Don’t worry about it?”_ Nursey’s voice borders on hysteric. “What are you— That wasn’t a fucking nightmare!”

Dex’s mind scrambles for purchase, desperately trying to find some way to reconcile the last few minutes with the reality he’s clinging to. “Stop it, Nurse,” he says. “The joke is over. So just—stop it.”

“What _joke—”_

“I bet there are cameras all over this fucking room—”

“It’s not a fucking joke!” Nursey is coming down the ladder now, dropping to the floor and rounding on Dex. “Don’t you fucking dare pretend that didn’t just happen. Don’t you dare pretend you didn’t _see_ that thing _. Don’t put this all on me!”_ Nursey’s eyes are wild, entire body shaking, and he jabs a finger into Dex’s chest as he speaks. Dex has never seen him like this before. So much of the Nursey he knows is tied up in that cool, “chill” facade, and right now Dex can’t find even a trace of it. He almost doesn’t recognize Nursey. It shocks him into silence.

“I know what I saw,” Nursey insists. “There was a—thing. A cat, or a monster, or— _Something_. It was up on _my_ bed, and _you_ saw it. You saw it. You saw that it was going to kill me.”

Dex takes a few steps towards the bed and sits heavily on his mattress. 

“That thing was real,” Nursey continues, his voice breaking. “There are rips in my sheets and there’s a crack in the window and there’s _claw_ marks on the floor, Dex. You can’t— You can’t tell me I’m making this up.”

He thinks Nursey might be crying now, but he’s covering his face with his hands, so it’s hard to tell. Dex looks at the jagged cracks that spiderweb out from the center of the windowpane and then lets his gaze dip to the floor, eyes wandering towards the four parallel gashes in the wood he knows he’ll see. They’re there, just like Nursey said. The wood around the claw marks is rough and splintering, and it leaves no room for doubt.

The monster is real.

“I’m sorry,” Dex says. Nursey lifts his face from his hands. “I’m sorry, it’s— It’s my fault.”

Nursey is staring at him now, brows knitting together in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I saw it a few nights ago,” he confesses, and now that he’s started it feels hard to stop. “In the basement. And on campus before that. Ever since we found— I thought I was just making it up. I’ve been feeling like it was watching me. Or following me. I don’t— I don’t know. But now it’s going after you—”

“Dex.” Nursey sits down next to him on the bed. Now that his hands aren’t covering his face anymore, Dex can see he really is crying. “Dex, I’ve been having nightmares about that thing ever since Halloween. I don’t think it’s just after you.”

The realization creeps like ice down his spine. “It’s after both of us, then.”

Nursey nods. “Seems like it.”

They sit in silence for a while as they both process what that means. Dex feels a dampness on his cheeks and realizes he’s crying a little, too. Great. He scrubs at his eyes quickly, wiping the tears onto his arm. 

“Dex,” Nursey says after another minute or two. “Do you think… Do you think it’s related to whatever killed...?”

Dex blinks. He remembers what the school paper had said—an animal attack, with the animal still at large. He remembers what her face had looked like, the long gashes running from temple to jaw. Claw marks. Claw marks just like the ones carved into their floor.

Dex feels like all the wind has been knocked out of him. “Shit.” He leans forward, his hands on his knees. His fingers and face feel a little numb, and he realizes he’s starting to hyperventilate. He shuts his eyes tight. Fuck, just— Just focus on breathing. In, hold for ten, out, hold for ten. It’s so fucking hard, though. It’s hard when he thinks about how close they came to— to almost—

There’s an arm around his shoulder, and Dex doesn’t think—just leans into it. Nursey wraps his arms around him and Dex responds in kind, squeezing his arms around Nursey’s back and holding on for all he’s worth. Nursey’s body is shaking and his face is pressed into Dex’s shoulder and he thinks he’s probably crying, but he doesn’t say anything about it because he’s pretty sure he’s crying again too. 

He’s not sure how long they stay like this. When they eventually pull apart, red-eyed and dehydrated, Dex feels exhausted and profoundly embarrassed despite the undercurrent of fear that still lingers at the back of his mind. It’s hard to even look at Nursey now—not when he can see his own snot stain on Nursey’s shoulder.

“So,” Dex says after a long and awkward silence, looking at the floor. “I guess this means we need to figure out how to kill that thing now.”

“Kill that thing?” Nursey straightens and looks at him. “Are you serious?”

“What’s our alternative?” 

Nursey is quiet. They both know what the alternative is. They’ve seen it firsthand.

“We can make a game plan tomorrow,” Dex says. “We’ll—I don’t know. Talk to someone. See what we can find out.”

“Okay.” Nursey nods, his hands in his lap. “Okay, but—in the meantime...”

“In the meantime?” 

“There’s no fucking way I’m going to be able to sleep.”

Dex frowns. “Kind of figured that went without saying.”

“Want to watch a movie?”

At that, Dex finally meets Nursey’s eye. Nursey looks like shit, but he’s got the shadow of a grin on his lips, and something in Dex’s chest loosens just a little.

“Sure,” Dex replies. He does his best to grin back, though he’s not quite sure he manages it. “I’ll go get my laptop.”

They sit side by side on Dex’s bed until sunrise, the laptop balanced between them, watching as many dumb comedies as Nursey can put into his Netflix queue. The world feels like it’s shattered to pieces with nothing but a few threads keeping Dex upright, but this—sitting here with Nursey, smiling at stupid jokes even if they don’t quite have the energy to laugh at them—this is nice. This is good. And if Dex is sitting a little too close, Nursey never mentions it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was probably one of the hardest things i've ever written. i'm pretty scared of the dark, so i had to sleep with the lights on for a little while after writing this part. hope y'all are chill.
> 
> The creatures in this fic aren’t inspired by any one specific thing; they’re more of an amalgamation of a bunch of different spooky stuff that I liked. My main inspirations were the Beast of Truro (a Cape Cod cryptid), the Tainted Cats / Impure Cats in From the New World (2012), Diana from Lights Out (2016), the bear from Annihilation (2018), and whatever the hell is in the Blaire Witch video game my roommate’s been playing. I did not try to pull from any mythical beasts / culturally significant creatures, so any similarities are unintentional.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks! Posting is a little delayed since I am having trouble wrapping up the last couple chapters of this fic. I'll try to post chapters a couple times a week until this story is finished. :) In the meantime—it's cryptozoology research montage time!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Discussion of trauma and heavy criticism of university mental health services. We're pretty light on any spooky stuff, though.

“This seems like a waste of time,” Nursey says, leaning over Dex’s shoulder with his hand resting on the back of the desk chair. “I don’t think you can just google ‘shadow cat demon’ and expect to find what we’re looking for.”

“First off, this isn’t Google,” Dex says, pointing at the URL on his laptop screen. “This is DuckDuckGo. And second—fuck off. We have to start somewhere.”

“Fine, fine. Go for it, then.”

Dex yawns and reaches for the trackpad. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and Dex only managed to get about an hour of sleep this morning. After the night they had, he’s honestly surprised he got even that much.

He’s sitting in the only chair in the room with his laptop balanced precariously atop all the random crap covering Nursey’s desk. It’s not the best research setup, but as far as the Haus goes, it’s their only option. Dex’s room in the basement is still too dimly lit to be comfortable, the reading room doesn’t really provide the privacy they’re looking for, and setting up camp in the common area would provoke all kinds of questions about why they’re researching shadow monsters instead of going to class. He and Nursey have decided by mutual agreement that it’ll be better to keep this between the two of them. He has no idea where they’d even begin to start explaining the situation, and getting others involved would only put them at risk.

“We’ll just see what comes up in the first search,” Dex says, mousing over the “Search” button. “We’ll try other search terms later.”

Dex taps the trackpad, and the webpage loads the search results. Dex frowns. 

“‘Five signs a ghost cat may be haunting you,’” Nursey reads. “Ooh, and a list of cat demons and their cultures of origin. This is just like that scene in Twilight where Bella—”

“ _Do_ _not_ reference Twilight right now, Nurse, or I swear to God—”

“Don’t tell me this isn’t making you think of the ‘Cold Ones’ search montage—”

_“Nursey—”_

“Okay, okay! Chill,” Nursey says. Dex shoves at him with his elbow, but Nursey ignores it. He leans in a little closer, moving his hand from the back of the desk chair to rest on Dex’s shoulder. “Let’s see what other results we have here. There’s an anime wiki page. And it looks like we’ve got some cat drawings from deviantArt, too. Maybe this isn’t a waste of time, after all.”

Dex sighs. He wants to shove Nursey again, but he has a point. Dex scrolls back up to the top of the page and tries adding “Samwell animal attack” to the search bar. This time, the number of results is significantly smaller, but all the top results just seem to be news websites sharing slightly reworded versions of what was published in the local Samwell newspaper. There’s no new info—just Aya El Mehdi and the location her body was found. 

Dex tries another dozen or so search terms, but none of the results seem to match what they’re looking for. Even the few forum posts he finds about strange cat-like ghosts or shadows lack any mention of those creatures actually _attacking_ their victims. They’re also usually missing some of the more specific details, like rows and rows of black teeth or the sulfur-yellow eyes. After reading three of these vague, almost identical stories, Dex goes back to the DuckDuckGo home page and tries one last search: “Cat monster Massachusetts”.

“Hm, what’s the Beast of Truro?” Nursey asks, pointing at the screen with the arm that’s looped around Dex’s shoulder. Nursey’s face is particularly close to his now. Dex does his best to ignore it, even though it’s making him uncomfortable for reasons he can’t quite articulate.

He pulls up the “Beast of Truro” article and starts skimming the text—1982, small Cape Cod community, disappearing pets, mauled livestock, sightings of big cats in the dark from a distance. Nothing is particularly conclusive, and Dex closes his laptop in frustration. “You’re right. This was a waste of time.”

“Hey. As much as I like hearing you say that, it _was_ worth a shot.”

“I guess…” Dex rubs his hands over his face and then sets them back on the desk, drumming his fingers. “So what’s next, then? Where do we go from here?”

“We could see if we can find more about Aya?” 

“Aya,” Dex repeats. 

“Aya El Mehdi. The—”

“I _know._ I’m just thinking.” Dex leans back a little in the chair. “Where do we even start? Do we contact her family?”

“We can’t just contact her family. They’re grieving. We shouldn’t—”

“You know what’s going to happen if we can’t figure this out, right Nursey?”

“Jesus, Dex, of course I—” Nursey lets out an exasperated breath. “Just _listen_ for a second. I just mean we shouldn’t go to them right away if there are other options. Let’s see if we can talk to someone on campus first—a friend, or a roommate, or something. If that’s not helpful, then we’ll try the family. Okay?” 

“Fine,” Dex agrees. He pushes the chair away from the desk, knocking it back into Nursey’s chest. Nursey lets out a disgruntled sound but steps back enough for Dex to get to his feet. “Let’s try a roommate first. If what we saw last night is the same thing that got her, we know it only comes after dark.”

“Good thinking,” Nursey says, clapping him on the back. “I’ll go shower. Then we’ll head out.”

—

They manage to get Aya’s dorm building and room number from Ford under the guise of paying their respects to the family. “For closure,” Nursey tells her. Dex feels a little guilty about how easily Ford agrees to help them out when Nursey says that, but at least it keeps her from asking them questions.

Aya’s room is the third floor of the freshman dorm’s east wing. Dex’s room was here, too, back in his first year. Chowder and Nursey were in the south wing, but they sometimes came over to the east wing to hang out. The east wing’s lounge has the best view.

The building has hardly changed at all since then. Even though the third floor theme is Jurassic Park instead of Pixar movies, and there’s new chalkboard art decorating the walls next to each of the doors, the hallways feel the same. He remembers what it was like to be a freshman, eighteen years old and living on his own for the first time. Around this time two years ago, Dex was midway through his first real Computer Science class, and Nursey had just scored his first goal at Samwell. Standing in this building, it doesn’t feel that long ago.

When they eventually find Aya’s room, the door is—predictably—closed. On the door are two name plates shaped like dinosaur footprints; one says “Aya”, and the other says “Gabi”. They stand outside for a few moments before Dex eventually takes the initiative and lands a couple quick knocks on the door. 

The hall is quiet for a few moments. Then the door opens, and a student in yoga pants and a Samwell sweatshirt stands in the doorframe. Her hair is coming loose from its ponytail and her eyes look just as tired as Dex feels.

“Um,” she says, frowning at them. “Can I help you…?”

“Sorry to bother you,” Nursey says quickly, giving her a sheepish smile. “You must be Gabi? I’m Derek. This is Will. We’re with the Peer Health and Wellness Commission.”

Dex glances at Nursey for a second. They hadn’t talked about what they were going to say, but Dex had sort of been assuming they’d just tell the truth—or as much of the truth as they could without talking about monsters and shadows. This was very much _not_ what Dex expected. Did Samwell even have a Peer Health and Wellness Commission?

“Oh,” Gabi says. She drops her hand from the doorframe but otherwise stays where she is, blocking the doorway. “I, um. The school counseling center already reached out last week…”

“That’s good. They’re a really great resource for some folks,” Nursey says with another smile. “We just wanted to come around and make sure you knew that we’re here to help, too. Some people are more comfortable talking to peers than they are talking to the counselors.”

Gabi tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and nods. Her eyes are a bit bright, and she presses her lips together tightly for a few moments before replying. “Um. Yeah. That’s actually—” She sniffs and blinks up at the ceiling for a second. “That’s actually really helpful. Because the counselors here at Samwell— I tried going to them when Aya started— When things started to… _Shit_.” She covers her face with her hands. “The counselors are fine, but— It costs money, to go—”

“It sounds like there’s been a lot going on,” Nursey says gently. “We’re not licensed counselors or anything, but sometimes just having someone to talk to can help. Do you want to talk about it?”

Gabi looks up at them. In that moment, Dex is struck by how young she looks, lost and watery-eyed in her too-big sweatshirt. She’s eighteen, and she just got here a couple months ago. Now her roommate is dead. Her first year at college is supposed to be about meeting new people and experiencing new things—but she’s here instead, getting conned by a couple hockey players pretending to be peer counselors or something. Guilt twists deep in Dex’s stomach. They shouldn’t be here. They shouldn’t, but—

They don’t have any other options.

“That would be—good. I think,” Gabi says finally. She steps back from the door. “You can come in, if you want.”

The dorm room is a mess. The whole left side of the room is covered in boxes of books and clothes, while the right is strewn with laundry. The trash in the corner is filled to the brim with empty Cup Noodle containers. “Sorry for the mess,” Gabi apologizes. “Aya’s parents... They came by a little while ago but— Finishing the packing was hard.”

“I can’t even imagine what that must be like,” Nursey says. “I’m sure that’s rough for you, too.”

Gabi sits on her desk chair and rubs her arm. “I only knew her a couple months.”

“Still,” Nursey insists. “Just because someone else has it worse doesn’t mean this isn’t also tough for you.”

At that, Gabi bursts into tears. Dex stands awkwardly on Aya’s side of the room while Nursey moves a box of tissues onto the desk next to Gabi. “Sorry,” she says, voice trembling. 

Nursey pulls over the desk chair from Aya’s side of the room and sits a few feet away from Gabi. “It’s okay. Take your time.” 

“Sorry, I just— I haven’t been able to talk about this much. I don’t know anyone here well enough yet to talk really.”

Dex frowns. Were they really the first students to come check on Gabi? Maybe the Peer Health and Wellness Commission should be a thing—not that Dex would be a good candidate to join it. He’s never been very good at handling this kind of thing. But Nursey— Dex is honestly a little surprised at how good Nursey is at this. Other people on the team always said Nursey was a good listener, but that isn’t a side of Nursey that Dex has gotten to see. Not until now, that is.

While Nursey talks patiently with Gabi, Dex does his best to subtly check the room for signs that the monster has been here. The thing left scratch marks in the floor of his and Nursey’s room. If it had been here too, there’s a good chance he’ll find some evidence.

“Aya was my first friend when I got here,” Gabi is telling Nursey. “She was super nice. We got along really well at first because she and I are— We were both going to be art majors.”

 _At first_. Dex pauses by the windowsill. He gives Nursey a look from across the room, and Nursey meets his eye. Apparently he noticed that, too. Nursey doesn’t press, though—just waits for Gabi to continue.

“But you know that long weekend in early October we get off for Rosh Hashanah?” she says. “Aya started having a really rough time after that. Something happened when she went home to visit her family, and when she came back—” Gabi hesitates. “You guys don’t… You don’t talk about the stuff I say outside of here, right?”

“Of course not,” Nursey assures her. “Strict confidentiality. The only time we’re legally obligated to say anything is if you tell us that you’re planning to harm someone else or yourself.”

There aren’t any marks on the windowsill that Dex can see, and the floor doesn’t have any obvious scrapes. There’s nothing on the furniture as far as he can see, either, but there is an icy blue Ikea rug covering part of the floor at the foot of Aya’s bed. He edges towards it.

“Okay.” Gabi wipes her eyes. “Um. Well. It’s part of an ongoing investigation so I don’t know how much I can say, but… When she went to visit her family—they live near the State Park on Cape Cod. She told me she went hiking and found a body in the woods.”

Dex’s blood goes cold. Across the room, Nursey’s whole body has gone still. 

“After Aya got back, she wasn’t really the same. She hardly talked to me anymore. I tried so many times but she just stopped engaging, and she would get these nightmares—she’d literally wake up screaming some nights, or she’d think there were things in the room trying to get her, and I… I just didn’t know what to _do.”_

“Do you know what her nightmares were about?”

Gabi shakes her head. “Not.. not really. She never told me. I just assumed they were about what happened to her over break.”

When he’s close enough, Dex flips the corner of the rug over with his foot. Hidden under is a long gash. Dex pushes the rug a little further back, revealing three more, carved deep into the wooden boards to form four parallel marks.

Gabi is nearly sobbing now, her face buried in her hands. “After the first couple weeks she would hardly even sleep. She’d just sit in the room with the lights on, writing in some—notebook.” 

_Notebook._ Dex looks at the boxes sitting on Aya’s bed. The one with books and papers in it is still open. The book at the very top is a worn Moleskine journal.

Dex doesn’t think—he just reaches out and grabs the book.

“And she wasn’t going to classes—she was hardly leaving the room. I tried talking to the counselors but they couldn’t do anything, not unless she went to see them. She wouldn’t talk to our RA. I didn’t have her family’s contact information. And when she disappeared on Halloween, she sent me a bunch of texts that didn’t make sense, asking where I was… I was so sure she’d—”

Gabi isn’t able to say anything after that for a long time. Dex has no frame of reference for a situation like this—can’t even imagine what he would have done differently. How could the school not have more systems in place to help? He clenches his jaw, teeth grinding. God, it makes him furious. This shouldn’t happen—to Aya or to Gabi. The school should be doing more, and the monster— 

Dex wants to kill that thing more than ever.

When Gabi recovers enough to speak again, she looks pale and drawn, as though all the energy has been drained from her. “Sorry,” she says. “Sorry, I— I didn’t know I’d get like this.”

“No need to apologize. It’s good that you were able to talk about it,” Nursey says. “It might be a good idea to stop for today, though.”

Gabi nods. “Thank you.”

Nursey gives Gabi his number in case she wants to talk again. Dex writes his number down too, but it’s clear between the two of them who Gabi would call if she needed to. Dex hardly did anything. 

He’s going to do something, though. As they leave Gabi’s room—Aya’s room—Dex clenches his fists and reminds himself why they came here in the first place. They’re going to figure out what that creature is. They’re going to find out why it’s attacking them, and they’re going to learn how to beat it.

Or they’re going to die trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dex, dropping his gloves: time to die, motherfucker
> 
> nursey: this is just like that scene in twilight—
> 
> next chapter: the cryptozoology research montage continues


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my wonderful artist has uploaded their piece inspired by this fic!!! i'm so excited!! please check the story notes for the link :)
> 
> also, thank you for your patience as i worked on this chapter. i'm aiming for two updates a week at the moment, so stay tuned.

Dex waits until they’re out of earshot of Gabi’s dorm, heading down the stairs towards the ground floor before he says, “I found scratches in the floor. Under the rug.”

Nursey slows and lets out a breath. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. 

“So...it’s definitely the same thing.”

“I’d say so.” Dex hesitates on a landing in the stairwell and looks back up at Nursey. “And Aya—she found a body, too. You think...”

Nursey’s expression is grim. “Yeah. Doesn’t seem like that could be a coincidence.”

Dex pulls out his phone and leans against the railing. “She said she was hiking at the state park by Cape Cod, right?”

“Yeah.”

Dex types in a few key terms to his browser as Nursey leans against the railing next to him. His phone spends several seconds loading; his connection in the stairwell is pretty bad. While the loading bar slowly fills, Dex glances over at Nursey and says, “You were—good. By the way.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Back there.”

“I guess.” Nursey shrugs. “I’ve been to enough therapy to know more or less what it’s supposed to look like.”

Dex frowns. There’s a lot to unpack there, but Dex isn’t sure now is the time to get into it. Instead he just says, “Pretty sure going to therapy doesn’t automatically make you good at pretending to be a peer health mentor.”

“Dude.” Nursey stiffens a little. “We agreed that we had to do this. I didn’t  _ want  _ to lie—”

“That’s not what I meant.” Dex sighs. “I just meant—you’re good with people. It was a compliment. That’s it.”

Nursey does relax a little at that, but the stiffness in his shoulders hasn’t quite left. “The page loaded,” he says simply.

“Oh.” Nursey is right. Dex looks back to his phone and reads the title of the first link.  _ Body of Missing Park Ranger Found in Cape Cod.  _ “Shit…”

He taps the link. When it opens, they spend a few minutes reading through the article in silence.

> **Body of Missing Park Ranger Found in Cape Cod**
> 
> By Cassidy Juarez | Posted: Mon 7:06 AM, Oct 3, 2016
> 
> _ Officials have recovered the body of Park Ranger Greg Carson (54) who went missing in Cape Cod’s Nickerson State Park last week. The body was reportedly found early Sunday morning by a hiker two miles from the trailhead.  _
> 
> _ While Massachusetts State Police are still investigating, officials say the initial cause of death is being ruled as the result of an animal attack. Forensics determined the time of death to have been four days prior. Officials have not yet ruled out a criminal act, but no foul play is suspected. _
> 
> _ "Their initial determination was this was caused by injuries consistent with an animal attack," said Detective Vanessa Lee with the Barnstable County Police. "However at this point, there is no way they can determine what animal it may have been. Could be a bear. Could be a cougar. We don’t know.” _
> 
> _ Despite these uncertainties, Detective Lee assures us that the police have the situation under control. “We have the best search teams in the county looking for signs of unusual animal activity and we will let the public know as soon as we find what we’re looking for.” _
> 
> _ In the meantime, Nickerson State Park will remain open with limited trail access. Rangers urge visitors to make noise while hiking and to keep aware of their surroundings.  _

“The timing fits,” Dex says. “October 3rd was during the long weekend. It’s in a state park by Cape Cod. And a hiker found the body.”

“And it was an animal attack.” Nursey bounces a curled knuckle against his mouth. “Can you… Can you check if the park ranger’s name gets us anything?”

Dex makes the search, but the top results are mostly just about his memorial service, which all seem fairly standard. The man lived alone, no close family, no details beyond how dedicated he was to his job. Dex goes back to the search engine and tries another search—”cape cod body found by park ranger”—and sets the search parameters to only include results from before Greg Carson went missing. The first result seems a little closer to what they were looking for.

> **Human Remains Discovered in Cape Cod, Shedding Light on Thirty-Year-Old Case**
> 
> By Sharron Seong | Posted: Wed 8:52 AM, Sept 1, 2016
> 
> _ The remains of a man who went missing in late 1981 were found Thursday, authorities said. _
> 
> _ The skeletal remains were discovered by a park ranger in a narrow cave near Truro, the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office stated in a press release. Police believe the remains to be those of Adam Providence, a fisherman who disappeared in October of 1981.  _
> 
> _ Police are still investigating the cause of death. It is unclear if Providence’s death was an accident or the result of criminal acts. _

“Okay. Could be coincidence,” Dex says. “It doesn’t say which park ranger found the body.”

“True, but… Truro kind of sounds familiar?”

“Truro…” Dex thinks for a second. Then— “The Beast of Truro.”

“Shit. That was one of the cat cryptids we found, right?”

“Yeah. And I’m pretty sure the article was from the early 80s, too.”

“Okay.” Nursey clasps his hands behind his neck. “Okay, that’s— Shit. Okay.”

“So we’ve got the park ranger, who found a body and then died from an animal attack. And then a student who found his body, and died from an animal attack. And now…”

Nursey’s eyes go bright. “We’re next.”

“Hey. No need to be dramatic. We’re not going to die.” Dex says firmly. “We’re going to figure out how to beat it. We—” He moves his arm and feels a weight in the inner pocket of his jacket. Right. The journal.

“What’s up?” Nursey is eyeing him curiously, so Dex pulls out the notebook.

“I took her journal,” he says. Nursey blinks. “Aya’s journal. I— I took Aya’s journal.”

“Oh.” 

Nursey is staring at him, and Dex isn’t sure how to interpret Nursey’s expression. He feels himself getting defensive. “We needed the information.”

“That’s...true.”

“Are you judging me?”

“No,” Nursey says carefully. “I… I guess I’m just surprised. I didn’t even notice you’d taken it.”

“Well. I guess we both have hidden talents.”

Nursey’s frown deepens, but he doesn’t retaliate. “Let’s just get back to the Haus. We can see if there’s anything useful in the journal when we get there.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

There’s more Dex wants to say, but he isn’t sure how to put it into words. Words have always been Nursey’s thing—not his.

—

“Shit.”

They pull out the journal as soon as they’re back in their room, but the moment they crack the thing open, there’s an immediate, glaring problem.

“It’s in Arabic,” Nursey says. “This whole journal is written in Arabic.”

“Fuck.” Dex rubs his hands down his face. “It’s—we’re not going to be able to translate this. Google translate is good, but it’s not good enough to translate handwritten Arabic script.” 

“My Arabic vocabulary is like, two hundred words max. But I never learned how to read it.”

Dex glances at him. “Does… Does anyone in your family—”

“My mom,” Nursey says. “But… I don’t know how I’d explain this.”

“Yeah.” Dex doesn’t even know where they’d begin.

They sit on Dex’s bed, Dex looking over Nursey’s shoulder as he flips through the pages, starting at the most recent ones and working their way back. The only things in Aya’s journal that aren’t written in Arabic are a few familiar names—Samwell, Gabi, Koetter Art Center, Massachusetts. Greg Carson’s name is there too, as is Adam Providence’s. Seeing those makes Dex even more frustrated. He knows there’s information in here—stuff they could use—if only they could understand it. 

Then Nursey flips a page, and there’s a drawing.

It’s something like a panther, formed with dark ink in sharp, angular strokes on the lined paper. Towards the bottom of the page, the forked end of a barbed tail curves to avoid the edge of the paper. The creature is thin, every rib standing out in stark relief, every joint outlined in black. Inside the creature’s maw are more teeth than there should be, all pointed and razor sharp like the mouth of a shark. 

“That’s it.” Dex blurts. “That’s— It’s exactly what we saw.”

"So I guess that confirms it." Nursey smooths his thumb over the curling edge of the page's corner. "It came for her, too."

Dex feels sick. 

"Let's— Let's just check to make sure there isn't anything else in here."

Nursey flips quickly through the rest of Aya's notebook. Most of it is just more text in Arabic, aside from a page which looks to be a calendar of some kind. They spend a couple moments looking at it, but can't make out much aside from the months it represents: August, September, and October. The rest of the symbols are just random circles and semicircles. 

It feels like a dead end. They already knew that this creature was after them, and while it's comforting to know it's more than just their imagination, their research today hasn't gotten them much more than confirmation of what they already suspected. 

Dex sighs and lets himself fall backwards onto the mattress. A moment later, Nursey does the same, resting his arms behind his head.

Dex can smell his cologne.

“I’ll try to see where I can get with the Arabic,” Nursey says. “I’ve been meaning to learn anyway. It’d be chill.”

“Okay,” Dex agrees. “I guess I can keep researching. Maybe there’s stuff on the internet we missed.”

“Chill.”

Dex closes his eyes and takes a moment to collect his thoughts. When he opens them again, he says, “At least we know one thing.”

Nursey tilts his head to look at him, quirking an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

The space between them on the mattress seems suddenly so small when Nursey’s facing him. Dex resolutely keeps his eyes trained on the slats of the bunk bed above him and swallows. “Well,” he says. “We know it doesn’t like light.”

“Yeah,” Nursey agrees. “I guess that’s something.”

“And— The window.” Dex sits up and looks at their cracked windowpane—the same one the creature had leapt out of the night before. “It’s not completely immune to physics. I think there’s a reason it left through the window rather than going straight through the wall.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Dex stands, putting his foot over the place on the floor where the beast’s claws carved into the wood. “It landed around here, right? And then it jumped—” Dex pivots about forty-five degrees towards the window. “—towards the window at this angle. If it was just trying to get out as fast as possible, the wall was much closer. It could have just gone through the wall without having to move and angle the jump quite so much.”

“But it didn’t,” Nursey says. “So…the shadow thing can’t move through walls.”

“Right.”

“But it was able to get through the window...?”

“Because the window is transparent. The creature is moving like light, not solid matter.”

“Shit. Which means as long as there isn’t a way for light to get in—”

Dex turns around and grins. “The shadow thing can’t get in, either.” 

“Damn, Poindexter,” Nursey says with a smile. It’s the first time Dex has seen him smile since last night. “You’re so fucking smart.”

Dex rubs the back of his neck and wills away the flush he can feel creeping onto his cheeks. “I just hope I’m right.”

Because in this situation, being wrong has dire consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i apologize for the bullshit supernatural physics but listen. i almost failed my physics class back in college so... i do not know what i'm talking about. light is a particle *and* a wave???? what??? this is why this fic is paranormal mystery, not sci-fi. i do not know how to comply with the real physics of the universe and at this point i'm too afraid to try.
> 
> next update: they put their theories to the test. things don't necessarily go as planned.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story! I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think in the comments. <3
> 
> This fic is (mostly) all written, so I'll be publishing chapters here as I finish editing them.
> 
> Check Please may be over, but we fans will continue loving it for years to come. If you'd like to scream about omgcp with me, you can find me as pugglemuggle on [twitter](twitter.com/pugglemuggle) or [tumblr](pugglemuggle.tumblr.com)


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